{"id":2567,"date":"2015-04-07T16:30:19","date_gmt":"2015-04-07T16:30:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/news\/2015\/04\/07\/prince-of-wales-hospital-pregnant-jehovahs-witness-dies\/"},"modified":"2022-12-19T21:31:32","modified_gmt":"2022-12-19T18:31:32","slug":"prince-of-wales-hospital-pregnant-jehovahs-witness-dies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/prince-of-wales-hospital-pregnant-jehovahs-witness-dies\/","title":{"rendered":"Prince of Wales Hospital: Pregnant Jehovah’s Witness dies"},"content":{"rendered":"
DOCTORS were forced to let a pregnant woman and her unborn child die in hospital after the mother refused a blood transfusion because she was a Jehovah\u2019s Witness.<\/div>\n
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The tragic and avoidable case in Sydney has raised serious questions over the responsibilities of the medical profession to a patient and to a foetus.<\/div>\n
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The 28-year-old was almost seven months\u2019 pregnant when she was found to have acute promyelocytic leukaemia \u2014 and abortions in NSW are only available up to 20 weeks.<\/div>\n
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More than 80 per cent of pregnant women with this cancer will go into remission with the right treatment, and a foetus is likely to survive, but this woman\u2019s decision meant staff at the Prince of Wales and Royal Hospital for Women in Randwick had to watch her die.<\/div>\n
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In a report on the case published in the Internal Medicine Journal, haematologist Giselle Kidson-Gerber and Dr Amber Biscoe said the woman was likely to bleed to death if she had a Caesarean without a blood transfusion. Without the surgery, she lost the baby, and then suffered a stroke and multi-organ failure and died.<\/div>\n
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Steve Parnis, vice-president at the Australian Medical Association, told news.com.au that doctors cannot force a patient to accept treatment, even if they are pregnant.<\/div>\n
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\u201cIf a person is an adult, no, if they\u2019re not suffering from something that diminishes their capacity to make a decision, like a mentally debilitating illness, drugs or severe infection.<\/div>\n
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\u201cWhat you do have is an obligation to give the patient all the information so they know about all possible outcomes.<\/div>\n
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\u201cWhen we talk about care of an unborn child, the best option is to give the mother the best possible care. We have to recognise her autonomy.\u201d<\/div>\n
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Dr Kidson-Gerber told the Sydney Morning Herald she could understand the woman\u2019s decision as a Christian herself, but it was very hard for the obstetricians to watch in a country where they \u201crarely see people die, or make a decision that will hasten death\u201d.<\/div>\n
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While there are only a handful of cases like this in Australia each year, developments in healthcare could make a conflict of interest between mother and foetus more common.<\/div>\n
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And once a child is born, similar issues can still arise, if parents refuse treatment for a child not yet old enough to make decisions for themselves.<\/div>\n
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\u201cIn cases where the child requires lifesaving treatment, like an emergency blood transfusion or similar, we may have to seek guardianship,\u201d said Dr Parnis.<\/div>\n
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\u201cIt\u2019s incredibly difficult and we would do it reluctantly. I\u2019m not aware that most doctors would have the stomach to take the sort of measures that would force a major blood transfusion on a Jehovah\u2019s Witness, but if the risk of not transfusing was far outweighed by the potential benefits, we would have to consider it.<\/div>\n
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\u201cIf any alternatives were more acceptable to the patient we would explore them \u2014 transfusion has its own risks.\u201d<\/div>\n
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http:\/\/www.news.com.au<\/div>\n
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DOCTORS were forced to let a pregnant woman and her unborn child die in hospital after the mother refused a blood transfusion because she was a Jehovah\u2019s Witness. The tragic and avoidable case in Sydney…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-news","category-medical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2567"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2567\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6553,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2567\/revisions\/6553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}